What’s all this talk of the Avalanche-Red Wings rivalry cooling off, especially now that the teams are in opposite NHL conferences? It still seems to be one of pro sports’ most bitter rivalries — well, at least in the stands.
Justin Abdelkader’s second-period, power-play goal was enough for Detroit on Thursday night, when the Red Wings took a 3-0 victory over the Avalanche at the Pepsi Center.
Playing in his 11th consecutive Detroit game with No. 1 goalie Jimmy Howard out with a groin injury, backup Petr Mrazek had 28 saves in posting his third career shutout for the Red Wings. Semyon Varlamov, making his 16th start in Colorado’s last 17 games, stopped 26-of-27 shots and the Red Wings added empty-net goals from Darren Helm and Luke Glendening.
The Avalanche was 0-for-3 on the power play, extending its scoreless streak with the man advantage to 23.
“We put pucks on net on the first two,” said Colorado coach Patrick Roy. “But we just can’t get the rebounds. We just don’t compete enough. … In the second, we lost the momentum in that power play because we lost every battle. They cleared easy. I guess we’re going to have to rethink about the players we put on the ice and we’re going to have to do things a little different. We’ve been giving them a lot of chances to produce and it’s not working.”
Colorado was blanked for the seventh time this season, or six more times than in all of 2013-14.
Although Avalanche winger Nathan MacKinnon, an unlikely candidate to drop the gloves, fought with the Red Wings’ Jonathan Ericsson only 44 seconds into the game, at times it seems it’s far more likely for fisticuffs to break out among fans in the seats or on the concourse than on the ice in this rivalry because the paying customers of both teams have longer memories about the matchup than do the players. As is the case often at Pepsi Center games, the staggering number of opposing team fans was quite noticeable Thursday.
Colorado seemed to have taken a 1-0 lead in the first period after Nick Holden carried in the puck to start the play. He went to the net and as the sequence continued, eventually knocked the puck down with his glove. It went off the skate of Detroit defenseman Kyle Quincey, and Gabe Landeskog knocked it past Mrazek. But the goal was waved off in a video review because, while it can be a discretionary call involving interpreting what’s gaining an “advantage,” a hand pass isn’t negated when the puck hits an opposing player.
“Oh, yeah, it’s the rule,” Landeskog said. “It needs to change possession for it to be allowed, so no doubt about it. … We don’t have time to hang our heads. We have two big games coming up (at Minnesota and Winnipeg).”
It stayed scoreless until after Colorado’s Jan Hejda was called for interference at 12:47 of the second period. Standing his ground in front, Abdelkader knocked the puck past Varlamov 38 seconds into the power play to give the Red Wings the lead.
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
